Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [39]
“Ah, no,” Mortar said. “An easy mistake, Brokkenbroll. This isn’t the Shwazzy. This young lady is Deeba Resham. She’s in the book, too, I think you’ll find, but not as the Shwazzy.”
“What good’s it being in the book?” Deeba said. “The book’s wrong.”
“How dare you!” the book said.
“Well?” she said, pointing at Zanna. There was shocked silence.
“That,” said Mortar, “is the Shwazzy.”
“Ah,” said Brokkenbroll. “I see.” He looked down at her. “She is blond,” he said gently. “I thought I’d heard that. Is she…”
“No,” said Mortar quickly. “We chased off most of the Smog. Only a very little got in.”
“But enough to…cause difficulty?” Brokkenbroll said quietly. Mortar nodded.
“Oh my,” the book said suddenly. Its voice was hollow and horrified. “She’s right. It’s wrong. The stuff in here. In me. It’s wrong.”
“Things aren’t very clear right now…” Mortar said to Brokkenbroll.
“What’s the point?” the book whispered. “What is the point?”
“Book, please,” Mortar said, and swallowed. “What we’d thought we knew…turns out there were a few surprises. And yes, we wanted to speak to you, to understand what’s been happening. Maybe you can make sense of some things…”
“Why you calling umbrellas down from London?” Deeba said, in tearful rage. “Why did you send one to watch my friend’s house? It’s because of that we came down here. What did you do?”
“Ah,” said Brokkenbroll slowly. “At long last, things begin to make a bit of sense.”
“So explain,” Deeba said. “And then we can do something about Zanna, and…” She pointed at her friend, and her voice suddenly dried.
The pall of dirt-colored smoke that had gushed out of all the stink-junkies’ tubes, that the unbrellas and the binja had tried to waft away, had been quietly coagulating again. It hung over the scene of the fight, a concentrated smudge, creeping closer to Zanna’s body.
“A smoggler!” Mortar said. “A separate nugget. Keep it from the Shwazzy! We have to stop it joining the main mass of itself. If the Smog finds its way onto the bridge we’re finished!”
It was a dense cloud, three or four meters across. It coiled and darkened like a baleful pygmy storm. From deep in its innards came a grinding, like teeth.
The cloud seemed to gather itself. Then with a rattling like a machine gun, it spat a rain of stones and coal and bullets, straight at Deeba.
27
A Wall of Cloth and Steel
So fast he was a blur, Brokkenbroll leapt in front of Deeba. In each of his hands was an open unbrella.
The Unbrellissimo twirled as if he were dancing. He spun the bent unbrellas in his hands, holding them like shields. Impossibly, with a pud-pud-pud, the smoggler’s missiles bounced off the canvas.
Brokkenbroll swung the unbrellas so quickly they looked like a shimmering wall of colored cloth and thin metal fingers. He shouted an order. The other unbrellas flapped up, opened, and spun and joined in blocking the Smog’s attack. Some were torn, some bent, some inverted into bowl-shapes. But each made itself a shield.
The onslaught slowed as the smoggler depleted. As its bullets ricocheted away, they dissolved in puffs of smoke, and drifted back towards the Smog. But the unbrellas didn’t give it a chance to regroup. With frantic opening and closing, they made a wind.
The smoggler sent out smog tendrils, groping, trying to hold on to the bridge. But the unbrellas were remorseless against the nasty little miasma. They blew it in clots off the bridge and into the wind.
It was too small to hold firm. It grew paler, and see-through, and then was just a stain in the air, and then was gone.
Deeba and the Propheseers stood in the thick light of the setting UnSun and watched the unbrellas drop, one by one, as if exhausted, beside Zanna.
“Those were bullets,” Lectern said. “And darts. Your unbrellas are canvas.”
“So,” said Mortar to the Unbrellissimo. “How in the name of bleeding bricks did you do that?”
“I wasn’t sure when to tell you,” Brokkenbroll said. “I hadn’t yet done a